[ubuntu-uk] OT CPU Advice

[Rob Beard]

On 30 Nov 2008, at 20:59, Ian Pascoe wrote:

> Matt / Lee
>
> thanks for the advice.  I had wondered if the age of the system  
> would be it's own stumbling block, and certainly from what you guys  
> have said it probably is.
>
> Oh well, looks like the drop in VAT, and the Xmas sales have come  
> just at the right time for me ....
>
> Ian
>
Yep, components are so cheap now, and eBuyer.com are offering free  
delivery when you spend over £50 (you have to choose the 5 working day  
delivery option but usually the order is delivered within 2 or 3 days  
anyway!).

You'd possibly find though that newer motherboards generally now only  
have one IDE connector on board so you'd probably be worth picking up  
a Serial ATA hard disk and DVD-Writer unless you already want to  
connect existing drives to one IDE channel (but this will limit you to  
the two devices).

I'd say you could pick up a Celeron Dual Core E1200 for about £35, a  
suitable motherboard for another £40 (I'd avoid Foxconn though), 1GB  
of DDR2 memory (Kingston memory is about £15 for a 1GB kit).  A case  
will cost about £15 with a cheapo power supply although you may want  
to consider something a bit better (I would recommend the Trust power  
supply at £17).

Here's what I'd go for if I was building a cheap system...

Processor - http://tinyurl.com/5uzldg - £34.25
Motherboard - http://tinyurl.com/63w69f - £37.94
Memory - http://tinyurl.com/5626so - £14.68
Power Supply - http://tinyurl.com/64kgl4 - £17.36
Case - http://tinyurl.com/5ras3u - £12.71
DVD writer - http://tinyurl.com/58e5zl - £13.69
250GB Hard Drive - http://tinyurl.com/49lree - £29.35 (turns out 250GB  
is about £5 more than an 80GB drive!)
Extra SATA cable for DVD writer - http://tinyurl.com/6bdbo6 - £2.50

So for under £165 you'll have pretty much a new PC which will keep you  
going for maybe another 8 years or so.

You could probably get a dual core Athlon X2 system for around the  
same sort of price too if you'd rather go for an AMD based system over  
an Intel one.

Rob

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